Green Lights

Green Lights is a project that was created to teach students about physical computing. This includes Inputs and Outputs, Electricity, programming with Arduino, and a little bit about traffic control systems. The intersection will be setup at the front of the classroom and students will be split up into teams. Teams will be given note cards with commands on them (Ex. lightOn('n', "green"); or sleep(2); ) which will be explained as part of the lesson. Overall, this project gives students an easy transition into the world of making electronics.

Step 1: Tools and Supplies

A quick note about this at the beginning of this project, I tried to use a Raspberry Pi with a PWM hat but changed that because trying to locate the drivers took so much time.

Attachments

Step 4: Problems and Future

I ran into a few problems throughout this project. The main one was with the wiring that came with the lights. The lights work great but the wires, not so much. Another pointer is don't use digital pins 1 and 0 because the code that I use includes Serial communication (requires 0/1) to carry messages back to the computer. Lastly, these materials were used to prove a concept so a hot glue gun may be required if something falls off.

I look forward to moving out of the prototyping phase into better quality building materials. This is one of four possible lessons that I could take to a study abroad in Norway so stay tuned. The light you see in the image is an actual yellow light. I hope to get that working with an Arduino using a relay so that the students can see the full size and brightness of just one part of an actual traffic light. Overall, this is an easier (cool) way to show others how an Arduino works!